The "Secret" to Maintaining a Healthy Weight by Older Adults

Generally speaking, it can be hard for older adults to maintain a desirable body weight but it's one of the key elements underlying good health. As everyone knows, exercise plays an important rule in this process. A recent article goes into great detail about the relationship between exercise and weight, citing some of the newer literature on this topic (see: Weighing the Evidence on Exercise). Below is an excerpt from it:

In a study published late last month in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Harvard University looked at the weight-change histories of more than 34,000 participants in a women’s health study. The women began the study middle-aged (at an average of about 54 years) and were followed for 13 years. During that time, the women gained, on average, six pounds. Some packed on considerably more. But a small subset gained far less, coming close to maintaining the body size with which they started the study. Those were the women who reported exercising almost every day for an hour or so. The exercise involved was not strenuous. “It was the equivalent of brisk walking,” says I-Min Lee, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the lead author of the study. But it was consistently engaged in over the years. “It wasn’t something the women started and stopped,” Lee says. “It was something they’d been doing for years.” The women who exercised also tended to have lower body weights to start with. All began the study with a body-mass index below 25, the high end of normal weight. “We didn’t look at this, but it’s probably safe to speculate that it’s easier and more pleasant to exercise if you’re not already heavy,” Lee says.

Here's what I, and others, now understand to be the "secret" to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight by older adults. Eat a nutritious and balanced diet (you know exactly what I mean when I say this!) and exercise moderately for about an hour almost every day and certainly six days per week. Your exercise regimen can consist of brisk walking, at a minimum, or a more vigorous choice such as jogging or spinning. For many older adults, committing to an hour of moderate exercise per day is not unreasonable from a time commitment perspective. For those who live in northern areas, walking outside year-round may not be feasible. In this latter case, you need to invest in some exercise equipment or join a health club or start mall-walking. An important goal is making your daily exercise regimen both a habit and enjoyable so that you don't need to force yourself to put on your walking shoes.

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